Another Kabuki Dance

This video, and no doubt others like it, is making the rounds on Facebook, the current and most widely used propaganda outlet for not only politicians, but hucksters of every stripe. I suggested to the Democrat that put it up that if he cannot detect fake outrage here, his right to vote should be rescinded. He suggested that I limit my criticism to “your own page,” an indication that he has unfollowed me. For a Democrat in Montana, criticism of Tester is like farting in church.

It is easy to see from the backdrop above, sound-absorbing panels with cheesy posters featuring Tester’s home state of Montana on them, that he is in a studio. That means that everything, including the paper bill he uses, is a prop. I imagine that he is looking at either a Teleprompter, or cue cards. His voice is perhaps a third higher in octave than normal, indicating some serious lying going on, like a kid saying “I didn’t eat those cookies, Mom! Honest! I didn’t!”

After this video was shot, I imagine the cheap posters in the background were replaced by posters featuring another state, and another actor took the stage and maybe even read the same script.

The tax bill will pass as written, no changes allowed, everything scripted right down to the public utterances of those senators and congressmen and women who have been given permission to vote against it to preserve the illusion of a deliberative process. The very same kind of Kabuki Theater was used in 2009 with passage of Obamacare, and earlier this year when Republicans feigned an attempt at repeal.

It’s rich corruption, and so common that it is hardly worth a blog post, but opportunity for me again to feature a photograph of Tester, landed gentry who does not know which end of a shovel works. It was used to promote his image as a dirty-hands farmer. It is complete Photoshop trickery.

Pictures of Tester earlier in this same photo shoot show him in the same jacket, clean and new. I originally thought that his handlers had taken it and given it some battery acid treatment, but later understood that such images are the product of Photoshop, especially noting that the colored hole in the jacket exactly matches the barn behind him, which has no foundations and ought not to be standing. Tester himself is cut off at the waist, as placement of feet in grass is very difficult to do convincingly on a computer screen.

Sorry to trouble our readers, far more inured to politics than ordinary people, and our European readers, who don’t care. Tester is low and ordinary, and causes a gag reaction in me. Please bear with one more shot at his sorry fat ass.

I don’t know when that perception shift happened or if it was deliberate, but keep in mind that when we use that word now, people have no clue what it means, so that we can just assume that by using it they mean to say “something good.” In the same manner, words like “Fascist” or “NAZI” used by these same people mean “something bad.” That is the extent of thought going on.

The meaningless term “our democracy” is pounded into the heads of tv-watchers with frightening regularity by all the top political figures and media talking heads. It may be the most endless lie of all lies. Both major parties are corporations registered by the government. Neither support or practice a process or form resembling any definition of democratic.

That background waivers like a green screen image will if the elements are not properly calibrated. If the cameraman had not moved in and out around the actor and his papers, the effect would be minimized or non existent. He should have shot the background in a similar hand held fashion. But that’s near impossible. This is a lesson that film student will have to learn if he’s going to work for the creeps.
The problem is as old as rear projection. Just watch an old movie where an actor is driving and the rear screen projection through the back window doesn’t really match; certainly not the sharpness and grain. This video needed to be stationary and jazzed up with jump cuts to keep the piece from being too static but at the same time hide the fact its all green screen.
You’re welcome, Langley.

I do see the wavering, now that you mention it. Interesting. If indeed they are using green screen to do this, the odds are that there were several takes. I would guess that they don’t hope to get it right on short notice, though it is possible. More likely, this video was shot long in advance of releasing on YouTube and Facebook.

Also, the idea that he has two hours to read a bill that thick is nonsense. It’s been around two months, but more importantly, if he did just get a copy, he should vote no. So should everyone who gets a bill like that on short notice. What are they, office clerks? I think that is misdirection … it gives us the impression that even though they only ahve two hours, their vote is still meaningful.

But then part of the subtext of this video is the idea that Tester reads bills. He took an obscure page out of the bill that looked like it was at the beginning even though it dealt with earnings of Sub-chapter S corporations and was likely from deep within. So that part is fake too. I mean, if they are just now handed the bill two hours before the vote, do all of the bills have the same non-binding scribble on them? Or did one of his staffers dive into to and start proposing changes? Not likely. It was another prop, like the bill itself.

Interesting that the page he does hold up apples to Subchapter S corporations. The income tax is only one of two taxes that working Americans pay, the other known as the Payroll, or FICA tax. It is about 14.2% on every dollar earned, and more than the income tax keeps regular people from getting ahead. Rich people by and large do not pay it. Many people (including me) have been using a dodge where we put our earnings in S-Corps, and at least delay payment of FICA, sometimes for years, sometimes permanently. Since FICA is the real revenue producer, the one that harms the most people, it should come as no surprise that they are closing that loophole. It was allowing ordinary people to pay less tax. That defeats the purpose of FICA.

I see this as step one, in a two-step process. The “deficit hawks” will reemerge when the cuts fail to produce projected tax revenues, screaming for new cuts in health benefits and Social Security payouts. This is a Reagan rerun.

Looking through Tester’s lineage, he goes back to Sussex in England, and is related to Feldwick’s, Rawlings, and Worthington’s. The lineages all come to an abrupt stop in the late 1700s.

His mother is more interesting, perhaps. She is a Pearson, and her lineage is scrubbed. There are 476 Pearson’s listed in the peerage, and scores more with hyphenated Pearson names, or Pearce, Pearsall, Percy, etc. However, Wikipedia says she is of Swedish background but the name is common in England and Ireland both, and reference is made to Ashkenazi Jewish surnames sounding like or spelled like Pearson.

I am not one to make a big deal of Jewish, per se, as my own name is Jewish even as I was raised Catholic. But I am beginning to get a whiff here of something hidden.

One final note, tester’s net worth is listed as $1.66 million, pretty small for the senate club, and most likely tied up in land. Land is wealth and power in a state like Montana where farmers and ranchers have always had disproportionate influence. True power in a resource colony like Montana rests in large timber and mining companies, however. At one time the Rockefeller family owned the largest copper mine, railroad interests and most of the state’s major newspapers. I don’t think it has changed much beneath the surface over the years.